This article is taken from the November 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

This is a story about the death of a once proud high street. It’s a demise which epitomises what’s broken in modern Britain. I speak, of course, of London’s own Royal Mile, running from Sloane Square to the World’s End Estate.

It is the King’s Road, rather than the West End or that monstrosity in Shepherd’s Bush, which has always been the true soul of the city’s retail life. But, behind the stuccoed doorways and perky shop windows, all is not well.

A recent fact-finding mission began at Peter Jones department store. Following a violent stomach bug which unexpectedly shrunk my waist measurement, I needed an emergency belt to secure my suit trousers. At the entrance, I expected to meet the usual crowd of French and Italian bankers’ wives, pushing designer buggies. Instead there was just emptiness — not even a South Ken dowager.

Worse was the menswear department, which appeared to have been abandoned following some civil emergency. The only belt in my size was designed for a Milanese rodeo rider.

Next stop, a few doors down, things were similarly bleak at the Saatchi Gallery, which over the years has evolved from its eponymous founder’s plaything to an eclectic shopping mall for collectors. “Things just aren’t selling,” explained an artist friend. “But no one wants to drop the catalogue prices, as we don’t know where things will end up if we do.”

Wandering further down the road, I noticed the only stores with customers were those catering exclusively for teenage girls from West London day schools. There are probably good margins in oversized acrylic jumpers and shapeless sweatpants — but poor Mary Quant must be turning in her grave.

I popped into the Ivy’s King’s Road offshoot for an early supper. It had a buzz but, on closer observation, many diners were cost-conscious suburban couples nibbling on shepherd’s pie from the £19 set menu. No wonder Richard Caring is in a rush to sell up.

A few days later, returning to SW3, I met a pal at a long-established Levantine cafe. In former times, it had been filled with the hubbub of business deals being hatched and political exiles plotting triumphant returns. Now, like Peter Jones, it was empty.

I asked the proprietor why. “Everyone has gone home,” he said dolefully. “First the Europeans went after Brexit. Then the Arabs went when they ended duty free.” The owner was referring to changes introduced by Rishi Sunak in 2020, which scrapped tax-free shopping for tourists.

Since the election, there has been debate about the implications of scrapping non-dom perks for affluent foreign residents. The evidence from my Chelsea field trips would suggest that many have already fled our shores. I fear any attempt to woo them back — however unlikely under this government — would be like closing the basement garage door after the Ferrari has bolted.

Does this really matter? After all, our indigenous middle classes have long quietly resented these immigrants for making Fulham unaffordable. However, this exodus does diminish our economy and takes something important away from the character of London.

I will leave it to the lobbyists for the rag trade and art market to come up with the economic impact reports. No doubt, there are Yorkshire raincoat makers and Cornish painters whose lives depend on the overseas pounds spent in West London.

Wealthy foreigners have transformed our capital and are part of its fabric

I think there is something even more vital at stake. Since the development of Eurobonds in the 1970s and the Big Bang of the 1980s, wealthy foreigners have transformed our capital and are part of its fundamental fabric.

To contemplate a London with no superyachts bobbing in St Katharine Dock, or gleaming supercars revving at the lights on Knightsbridge, is like imagining the ravens flying from the Tower or the Guards marching out of Buckingham Palace.

The drama and glamour of this hot money make us a magnet for everyone with ambition from Europe, the Middle East and far beyond — and ultimately this benefits us all. I realise it’s a hard sell defending people who cannot vote, might not pay much tax and whose tastes in leather goods can be questionable. But someone needs to, before it’s too late.

Now, earnest social democrats may imagine a bright future for the city which is both prosperous and more egalitarian — an English Hamburg perhaps. But the real alternative is a retreat to the post-war greyness described by Nicholas Boys Smith in last month’s Critic.

I am old enough to remember when the embattled middle classes huddled in isolated urban villages — Hampstead, Dulwich and Wimbledon — surrounded by half-inhabited wastelands, like the denizens of domed cities in post-apocalyptic science fiction. I have no wish to return to those bleak times.

Finishing my anthropological study, I returned to Sloane Square and paused for a moment at the Royal Court. For decades, this theatre has chronicled our changing social mores — from the Angry Young Men to the take-down of the Bullingdon Club in Posh. How will the current generation of playwrights chronicle the shifting sands on their doorstep?